Blog | Atheist Harvard student: God would be great for humanity
We’ve heard a lot about the “new atheists” over the past several years, beginning with the best-selling book by Sam Harris called “The End of Faith,” and others such as “God is Not Great” by the late Christopher Hitchens.
Many of my interactions with atheists over the past few years have been mostly hostile. They seem to not be content in believing what they believe, but are committed to making you so ashamed that you don’t believe the same thing they try to brow beat you into submission.
“Only stupid people can believe in a god!” they essentially scream.
Evangelical Christians get a bad rap because part of their core mission is to spread “the good news” and they, too, can get animated and defensive, even angry, when you don’t accept their view of God and sin and how we are supposed to live in this world. But I’ve found that tendency to be even more pronounced among atheists I’ve encountered.
Debates with them get old pretty quickly. For people who claim to be so superior and hyper rational, many of them don’t understand human beings very well.
Attempts to shame people to discard their most deeply-held beliefs is a fool’s errand.
That’s why I found a piece in the Harvard Crimson so interesting.
It is written by an atheist student who writes for the newspaper. It states clearly that he doesn’t believe in God, but with a humility I haven’t seen many people be able to muster.
Here is a taste of it (read the rest at the link below):
I cannot believe in God. It would be inaccurate to say that I am happy or even comfortable with my particular condition, for I feel nothing but a gnawing emptiness when confronted with the rites of the religious tradition in which my mother attempted to raise me. Try as I might, I simply can’t conjure up those feelings that I imagine must be the hallmark of faith—and for me, at least, reason leads to the same spiritual dead end.
Unlike many atheists, however, I believe that the existence of at least one god, if such a thing could indeed be demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt, would offer humanity the possibility of substantial moral improvement. While I am satisfied that a universal code of ethics could exist independently of faith, and that secular communities and organizations can offer the same benefits as their religious counterparts, I maintain that God could still change the equation for the better.
At its essence, religion demands that we acknowledge our inferiority to some being or beings. In my opinion, all the pomp and circumstance is extraneous, purely ornamental. This notion of inferiority is apt to provoke discomfort amongst many of us at Harvard—why should we, the denizens of one of the world’s most storied institutions, devote any time at all to the consideration of our own fallibility? The ethos of Harvard is collective triumphalism: We laud our Rhodes Scholars. We tout our financial resources. We celebrate our competition-crushing entrepreneurs. We conveniently gloss over the many alumni who will lead quotidian rather than superior lives.
This is the kind of contemplation on a variety of subjects I witnessed while I was at Harvard last year. It wasn’t quite what I expected or what many people here said I would.
I was challenged on all of these issues; no question was out of bounds. To me, that is the greatest sign of humility - and strength - to allow questions and answers take you where they are supposed to instead of being too afraid to explore them.
More about the “Hand of God” NASA image above:
"NuSTAR's unique viewpoint, in seeing the highest-energy X-rays, is showing us well-studied objects and regions in a whole new light," NuSTAR telescope principal investigator Fiona Harrison, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement.
The new image depicts a pulsar wind nebula, produced by the dense remnant of a star that exploded in a supernova. What's left behind is a pulsar, called PSR B1509-58 (B1509 for short), which spins around 7 times per second blowing a wind of particles into material ejected during the star's death throes.
As these particles interact with nearby magnetic fields, they produce an X-ray glow in the shape of a hand. (The pulsar is located near the bright white spot in the image but cannot be seen itself, NASA officials said.)
Scientists aren't sure whether the ejected material actually assumes the shape of a hand, or whether its interaction with the pulsar's particles is just making it appear that way.
"We don't know if the hand shape is an optical illusion," Hongjun An, of McGill University in Montreal, said in a statement. "With NuSTAR, the hand looks more like a fist, which is giving us some clues."
The red cloud appearing at the fingertips is a separate structure called RCW 89. The pulsar's wind may be heating the cloud to produce the low-energy X-ray glow, astronomers believe.
This story was originally published February 5, 2015 at 8:30 AM with the headline "Blog | Atheist Harvard student: God would be great for humanity."